Rich Maffeo on Nostr: “For my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of ...
“For my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples.” (Luke 2:30)
Simeon spoke these words of prayer to the Father as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. And it is to those words I want to draw our attention for just a few minutes as you read this because Simeon’s words have DIRECT application to you and me in 2023.
“My eyes have seen Your salvation.”
During this first week of Advent, I want to say it again as clearly as I know how: God is not mad at you.
Whoever you are, whatever you have done, and how often you’ve done it – God is not looking for ways to pay you back for your confessed sins. He has covered ALL of them – with His own precious and eternal blood. The idea that God still plans to take us to the proverbial woodshed is absolutely foreign to God's immutable words of promise delivered to us by His prophets and apostles from Genesis through Revelation.
God WILL NOT EVER punish us in the very least for ANY of our confessed sins. Indeed, the Holy Trinity brought about the first Advent of the Christ so God could and would treat our confessed sins as if they were never committed. That’s what the Greek word for the ‘remission of sins’ means.
Let me give you an example: I’ve never committed first degree murder. Never. So, it is unthinkable that any human court would punish me for something I never did. But to an infinitely greater degree, God's ‘court’ – being so much greater in purity and righteousness – why should anyone think the Great Judge would punish someone for a sin which He Himself considers having never been committed?
Some joke among themselves about Catholic guilt, or Baptist guilt, or whatever guilt. But such things are nothing to joke about. Such ‘joking’ does nothing less than drag a dark shadow across our lives as we wait for God’s judgment to fall on us. So, when Simeon said to God: “My eyes have seen your salvation” – there’s a principle here I don’t want any of us to miss. And that principle is this:
Simeon spoke these words of prayer to the Father as he held the baby Jesus in his arms. And it is to those words I want to draw our attention for just a few minutes as you read this because Simeon’s words have DIRECT application to you and me in 2023.
“My eyes have seen Your salvation.”
During this first week of Advent, I want to say it again as clearly as I know how: God is not mad at you.
Whoever you are, whatever you have done, and how often you’ve done it – God is not looking for ways to pay you back for your confessed sins. He has covered ALL of them – with His own precious and eternal blood. The idea that God still plans to take us to the proverbial woodshed is absolutely foreign to God's immutable words of promise delivered to us by His prophets and apostles from Genesis through Revelation.
God WILL NOT EVER punish us in the very least for ANY of our confessed sins. Indeed, the Holy Trinity brought about the first Advent of the Christ so God could and would treat our confessed sins as if they were never committed. That’s what the Greek word for the ‘remission of sins’ means.
Let me give you an example: I’ve never committed first degree murder. Never. So, it is unthinkable that any human court would punish me for something I never did. But to an infinitely greater degree, God's ‘court’ – being so much greater in purity and righteousness – why should anyone think the Great Judge would punish someone for a sin which He Himself considers having never been committed?
Some joke among themselves about Catholic guilt, or Baptist guilt, or whatever guilt. But such things are nothing to joke about. Such ‘joking’ does nothing less than drag a dark shadow across our lives as we wait for God’s judgment to fall on us. So, when Simeon said to God: “My eyes have seen your salvation” – there’s a principle here I don’t want any of us to miss. And that principle is this: